Donald Trump’s ability to tap into a deep American rage is the source of his power. In “Wind-Up Bird Chronicle,” Haruki Murakami, seeking to understand the resurgence of rightwing Japanese nationalism, has a Trump-like character who accesses a slimy substance within modern Japan.

Donald Trump has an uncanny resemblance to the villain Noboru Wataya in Haruki Murakami’s masterful novel “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle” (1998). Both have a similar hollowness and both have the ability to separate people from the higher instincts and put them in thrall to their lower ones.

The Haruki Murakami short story “Town of Cats” has a passage that speaks to literature’s ability to provide solutions to life’s problems==only the solution may be conveyed as “the indecipherable text of a magic spell.”

Literature is as vital to our lives as food and shelter. Stories and poems help us work through the challenges we face, from everyday irritations to loneliness, heartache, and death. Literature is meant to mix it up with life. This website explores how it does so.

Please feel free to e-mail me [rrbates (at) smcm (dot) edu]. I would be honored to hear your thoughts and questions about literature.